Gordon Hobday

Sir Gordon Ivan Hobday (1 February 1916 – 27 May 2015) was a British scientist who worked on penicillin with Alexander Fleming and is noted for his role as director of the Boots research team that developed ibuprofen. He later became chairman of Boots.

Hobday married Margaret Jean Joule on 5 October 1940 and they had one daughter together. In 1995, Margaret died and he remarried on 1 July 2002 to author Patricia Cooper, née Birge. He was Lord Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire 1983–1991. He was made a Knight Bachelor in the 1979 Birthday Honours.

He died on 27 May 2015, in King's Mill Hospital, Sutton in Ashfield at the age of 99.

Career Hobday joined Boots & Co as a research assistant after completing his PhD in 1940 and worked his way up through promotions. In 1952, he became head of the research department when the previous head, Jack Drummond was murdered, and re-purposed the department to find treatments for "diseases of civilisation". It was under this mindset that the department looked for an alternative treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, due to the toxicity of aspirin. The programme came up with ibuprofen, which was patented in 1961. In the 1970s, it became an over-the-counter pain killer and the World Health Organization put it on its list of "essential medicines".

In 1968, Hobday was appointed the deputy managing director for Boots, and in 1970, he became the managing director. By 1973, he had become chairman, where he attempted a merger with Glaxo and to buy House of Fraser, but the Monopolies Commission stopped both.